HANNS 
HEINZ 

EWERS 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

BY 
HANNS  HEINZ  EWERS 


Translated  from  the  German  by 

ADELE  LEWISOHN 


NEW  YORK 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH 

MCMXVII 


COPYRIGHT,  1916,  BY 
B.  W.  HUEBSCH 


FEINTED   IN    THE   UNITED    STATES   Or   AMERICA 


£ 


TRANSLATOR'S  INTRODUCTION 

One  of  the  reasons  for  Hanns  Heinz  Ewers'  in 
fluence  upon  German  verse  and  prose  is  his  wonder 
ful  sense  of  the  value  of  words,  of  their  colors  and 
sounds,  which  he  shares  with  the  masters  of  all 
times.  His  instinct  leads  him  toward  the  strange, 
the  unexpected.  The  actions  in  his  books  take 
place  in  the  human  soul — that  land  of  dreams 
which  unites  our  soul  to  the  world-soul. 

The  conception  of  the  "Alraune"  or  "Man- 
dragora,"  his  most  famous  book,  antedates  Pytha 
goras.  It  is  a  fable  of  the  plant  that  shrieks 
when  plucked.  Ewers  combines  this  story  with 
the  science  of  our  times  and  creates  a  tale  of  a 
strange  passion,  with  no  intent  to  intoxicate  but 
rather  to  explain.  This  book  has  affected  not 
only  the  literature  of  Germany,  but  the  literature 
of  France,  where  Ewers  lived  for  years  and  where 
he  collaborated  with  Marc  Henry,  a  French 
modernist,  in  bringing  out  some  French  fairy  tales, 
"Le  Joli  Tambour"  and  the  dramatic  poem,  "Les 
Yeux  Morts,"  now  set  to  music  by  d' Albert. 


387521 


INTRODUCTION 

I  cannot  quote  from  any  of  his  poems  for  they 
are  as  yet  untranslated.  In  the  series  called  "The 
Soul  of  Flowers,"  in  a  manner  so  simple  as  to  be 
almost  ingenuous,  he  has  declared  in  exquisite  lan 
guage  that  if  the  rose  is  the  flower  of  love  in  all  the 
universe  it  is  because  this  thought  caused  it  to 
become  what  it  is. 

His  "Sorcerer's  Apprentice,  or,  the  Devil 
Hunters"  is  a  powerful  performance.  A  commun 
ity  of  peasants  in  an  Italian  mountain  village  re 
peat  among  themselves  the  whole  of  the  passion 
of  Christ  until  the  final  crucifixion.  A  simple 
peasant  girl  is  hypnotized  into  believing  herself 
a  savior  and  taking  the  sins  of  the  world  upon  her 
shoulders.  Of  this  work  we  can  truly  say  that 
nothing  that  is  human  is  alien  to  it. 

Ewers  was  born  at  Dusseldorf  in  1871.  His 
father  was  a  painter  of  no  mean  ability.  His 
mother  is  a  woman  of  great  force  of  character 
who  translated  several  English  books  into  German 
and  who  has  always  deeply  influenced  her  son. 
Ewers  has  lived  in  almost  all  the  countries  of  the 
world.  His  "India  and  I"  is  a  record  of  his  life 
in  India  and  that  land  herself  is  presented  to  us. 
Her  holy  temples,  her  brown-faced  dancers  with 
their  swaying  limbs  and  open  arms,  her  incense, 
her  idols  and  her  fakirs.  All  these  are  given  new 

vi 


INTRODUCTION 

expression  as  seen  through  the  doubting  yet  loving 
and  always  personal  eyes  of  Hanns  Heinz  Ewers. 

His  conclusion  is  that  the  occult  is  so  deeply 
rooted  in  our  spiritual  natures  that  the  mind  is 
our  actual  body,  and  the  imagination  our  real 
mind — that  as  a  phenomenon  of  nature  there 
exists  nothing  more  holy  or  more  spiritual  than 
the  carnal. 

At  a  time  when  Poe  was  comparatively  little 
understood  Ewers  was  his  most  sympathetic  Ger 
man  interpreter.  He  is  able  to  mirror  the  soul 
of  Poe  because  they  are  intellectual  kinsmen. 
Both  are  at  home  in  "the  misty  mid-region  of 
Weir,"  both  dwell  "out  of  Space,  out  of  Time." 
Both  have  explored  the  realm  of  Horror.  In  fact, 
Ewers  has  gone  beyond  Poe  because  to  him  was 
revealed  the  mystery  of  sex;  to  Poe  sex  always 
was  a  sealed  book.  However,  his  attitude  toward 
Poe,  as  shown  in  this  little  essay,  is  almost  that  of 

a  worshipper. 

ADELE  LEWISOHN. 
New  York 
December,  1916. 


vii 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


IN   THE  ALHAMBRA 

LIGHTLY  my  feet  tread  over  the 
grey  stairs  of  the  old  path  that  I 
had  so  often  followed  to  the  Alham- 
bra's  sacred  groves.  The  Gate  of  the 
Pomegranates,  behind  which  I  flee  to  es 
cape  from  time,  opens  wide  to  my  ardent  de 
sires  so  gently  does  one  wander  into  the 
land  of  dreams, — where  the  elm  trees  mur 
mur,  where  the  fountains  babble,  where  from 
out  of  the  laurel  bushes  hundreds  of  night 
ingales  sing,  there  I  can  best  think  of  my 
poet. 

*     *     * 

One  ought  not  to  do  it.    Really  not. 

One  ought  not  read  any  mere  book  about 
the  artist  one  loves.  One  is  sure  to  be  dis 
appointed — how  can  the  dominie  speak  of 
God?  One  must  go  about  it  carefully,  very, 
very  carefully. 


Afi.'D   G  A   R       ALLAN       P   O   E 


It  ought  to  be  done  in  this  way: 

You  love  Firdusi — Goethe  wrote  about 
him.  You  do  not  know  Goethe?  Very 
well.  First  read  everything  Goethe  ever 
wrote  before  you  read  what  he  has  to  say 
about  the  Persian  poet,  and  then  only,  after 
you  absolutely  understand  the  man  who 
writes  about  your  favorite,  only  then  decide 
whether  you  will  read  what  he  has  to  say 
about  him — In  this  way  you  will  not  be  dis 
appointed. 

Never  read  what  Tom  and  Dick  write 
about  the  artist  you  love;  even  if  Tom  and 
Dick  happen  to  be  stars  of  the  first  magni 
tude,  and  if  the  poet  you  love  is  altogether 
a  tiny  speck  of  nebula — do  not  read  them! 
Do  not  read  them  before  you  know  Tom 
and  Dick  absolutely;  until  you  know  that 
they  have  a  right  to  sit  in  judgment  on  your 
artist. 

I  did  not  do  it  in  that  way.  I  have  some 
drops  of  a  heavy  fluid  in  my  blood  from 
some  source  or  another,  unbearable  German 
thoroughness.  From  a  sort  of  sense  of 
duty,  I  thought,  before  writing  of  the  poet 


EDGAR      ALLAN       PQE 

you  love,  read  what  others  before  you  have 
written  about  him — I  thought — perhaps — 

Thereupon  I  read  much  about  Edgar  Al 
lan  Poe,  and  I  am  so  disappointed — so  very 
much  disappointed.  There  was  only  one 
whose  mind  could  comprehend  him.  There 
was  only  Charles  Baudelaire. 

Baudelaire,  who  created  art  out  of  hash 
ish.  How  could  he  do  otherwise  than  com 
prehend  Poe,  he  who  moulded  works  of  im 
perishable  beauty  out  of  alcohol  and  laud 
anum! 

*     *     * 

Now  I  must  forget  all  that  the  others 
said.  I  must  forget  the  dreadful  Griswold, 
whose  whole  biography  of  Poe  is  nothing 
else  than  an  outburst  of  venom.  "He 
drank,  he  drank,  phew,  he  drank!"  And 
the  still  more  horrible  Ingram.  I  must  for 
get  this  fool,  who  saved  my  Poet's  honor  by 
stammering,  "He  did  not  drink,  really,  he 
did  not  drink  at  all" 

Quickly  before  I  forget  them,  I  must 
mark  down  the  dates  which  they  have  given 
me: 


EDGAR       ALLAN       FOE 

Edgar  'Allan  Poe — born  on  January  19, 
1809,  in  Boston.  Irish  family,  long  ances 
try,  Norman,  Celtic,  Anglo-Saxon  and 
Italian  blood.  In  1816  lie  went  to  England 
with  his  foster-parents.  A  few  years  at 
boarding  school  in  Stoke-Newington — 1822 
returned  to  America,  1826  studied  at  Rich 
mond,  then  in  Charlottesville.  1827  went 
on  a  trip  to  Europe  with  unknown  adven 
tures:  1830  Cadet  at  West  Point — 1834  edi 
tor  of  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger  in 
Richmond.  1836  married  his  cousin,  Vir 
ginia  Clemm.  He  wrote —  He  lived  al 
ternately  in  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Rich 
mond  and  Fordham.  Things  went  very 
badly  with  him.  "He  drank,"  says  Gris- 
wold.  "He  did  not  drink,"  says  Ingram. 
He  died  October  7th  in  the  hospital  for  the 
poor  at  Baltimore,  forty  years  of  age. 

So,  these  are  the  most  insignificant  dates. 
Now  I  can  forget  them  also. 


Yet  how  difficult  it  is.     Very  slowly  I 
walk  through  the  avenue  of  the  elms  up  to 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

the  King's  palace.  To  the  left  I  turn  in 
and  stride  through  the  mighty  Tower  Gate 
of  Justice.  I  am  delighted  with  the  hand  * 
lifted  above  me  to  ward  off  the  spell  of  the 
evil  eye.  I  think  my  priests  will  remain 
outside.  Now,  I  have  reached  the  top — : 
alone  in  these  familiar  rooms. 

I  know  very  well  where  I  wish  to  go. 
Quickly  through  the  courtyard  of  the  myr 
tles,  through  the  Hall  of  the  Mocarabians 
into  the  courtyard  of  the  Twelve  Lions, — 
to  the  left,  through  the  Hall  of  the  Two 
Sisters,  and  through  that  of  the  ajimezes  t 
I  go.  Now  I  arrive, — in  the  balcony  of 
Lindaraxa's  Tower,  where  Boabdirs  mother 
Ayxa  lived.  I  sit  on  the  windowsill,  look 
ing  out  upon  the  old  cypress  trees. 

How  difficult  it  is  to  forget.  There  are 
my  priests  walking  in  the  garden.  Two 

*  A  gigantic  hand  graven  on  the  arch  of  this  gate,  whose 
five  fingers  designate  the  principal  commandments  of  the 
creed  of  Islam,  and  which,  according  to  a  legend,  wards  off 
evil. 

f" Ajimezes"  is  a  Spanish  term  for  small  arched  windows 
supported  by  central  pillars;  he  probably  refers  to  one  of 
the  smaller  courts  famous  for  the  symmetry  of  these  win 
dows. 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

English  hypocrites,  round  hats,  short  pipes, 
black  coats,  with  Baedekers  in  their 
hands. 

"He  drank''  hisses  one. 

"O,  no,  he  really  did  not  drink,"  pipes  the 
other. 

I  would  like  to  knock  their  heads  together. 
I  would  like  to  shout  to  them.  "Away,  you 
rats,  —  away.  Here  sits  one  who  is  dream 
ing  of  the  artist  he  loves  !  He  sang  in  your 
language  —  and  you  know  nothing  of 
him—  " 

Presently  they  are  gone,  of  course.  I  am 
alone  again! 


He  drank  —  he  did  not  drink.  That  is  the 
way  the  Anglo-Saxons  dispute  about  their 
poets.  They  permit  Milton  to  starve;  they 
steal  his  whole  life's  work  from  Shakespeare. 
They  delve  into  Byron's  and  Shelley's  fam 
ily  histories  with  crooked  fingers;  they  calum 
niate  Rossetti  and  Swinburne;  lock  Wilde 
into  prison  and  point  their  finger  at  Charles 
and  Poe  —  because  they  drank! 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

After  all,  I  am  happy  that  I  am  a  Ger 
man.  Germany's  great  men  were  permitted 
to  be  immoral — that  is,  not  quite  exactly  as 
moral  as  the  good  middle  class  and  the 
priests.  The  German  says:  "Goethe  was 
our  great  poet."  He  knows  that  he  was  not 
so  very  moral  but  he  does  not  take  that  fact 
too  much  to  heart.  The  Englishman  says: 
— "Byron  was  immoral,  therefore  he  cannot 
have  been  a  great  poet."  Only  in  England 
could  Kingsley — that  offensive  preacher  of 
morality — have  uttered  that  remark  about 
Heine,  which  has  become  a  familiar  quota 
tion — "Do  not  speak  of  him, — he  was  a 
wicked  man." 

If,  however,  it  is  unalterable,  if  the  na 
tions  on  all  sides  acknowledge  and  love  the 
"immoral"  English  poets,  the  Englishman 
is  at  last  forced  to  speak — then  he  lies.  He 
does  not  renounce  his  hypocrisy;  he  simply 
says:  "Later  investigation  has  proved  that 
the  man  was  not  at  all  immoral, — he  was 
highly  moral,  quite  pure  and  innocent."  In 
this  fashion  the  English  have  "saved  the 
honor"  of  Byron.  It  will  not  be  long  ere 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

they  turn  a  Saul  Wilde  into  a  Paul. 
Thus  in  the  ease  of  Poe,  an  Ingram  followed 
a  Griswold  with  the  "Oh,  no,  he  really  did 
not  drink." 

/^The  English  are  now  permitted  to  appre 
ciate  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  since  it  is  officially 
attested  that  he  was  a  moral  being. 

But  we,  who  make  not  the  slightest  claim 
to  middle  class  morality, — we  love  him,  even 
if  he  drank.  Yes,  even  more  we  love  him 
because  of  his  drink,  because  we  know  that 
just  from  this  poison  which  destroyed  his 
body  pure  blossoms  shot  forth,  whose  artis 
tic  worth  is  imperishable.,/ 

How  works  of  art  are  created  is  not  the 
affair  of  the  layman, — that  is  the  affair  of 
the  artist  alone — no  one  may  venture  a  word 
or  even  pass  judgment  on  a  final  sentence. 
Only  the  few  whom  he  permits  a  glimpse 
into  his  mode  of  creating  because  they  love 
him,  may  silently  look  on — only  they  can 
tell. 

Wilde  tells  the  fairy  tale  of  the  marvel- 
ously  beautiful  rose  which  blossomed  from 
the  heart's  blood  of  the  dying  nightingale. 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

The  student  who  plucked  it  looked  and  won 
dered  ;  never  before  had  he  seen  such  a  won 
drous  blood-red  rose.  But  he  knew  not 
how  it  had  originated. 

We  marvel  at  the  Odontoglossum  grande, 
the  most  splendid  of  all  orchids.  Is  it  less 
beautiful  because  it  feeds  on  insects  which 
it  slowly  tortures  to  death  in  the  most  fear 
ful  manner?  We  rejoice  at  the  splendid 
lilies  in  the  Park  of  Cintra.  We  marvel, 
— we  have  never  seen  them  so  large  and 
white.  What  does  it  matter  that  the  crafty 
gardener  does  not  water  them  with  natural 
water,  but  with  guano,  with  selected  artificial 
manure? 

The  time  will  come  when  the  highroads 
of  our  sober  art,  only  scantily  lighted  by  the 
melancholy  lamps  of  alcohol,  will  be  ridi 
culed.  A  time  for  those  to  whom  intoxica 
tion  and  art  are  inseparable  ideas,  who,  as 
a  matter  of  fact  will  only  recognize  the  dis 
tinction  in  the  art  brought  forth  by  intoxica 
tion.  Then  only  will  one  give  to  these  path 
finders  the  high  places  they  deserve,  to  Hoff 
mann,  Baudelaire,  Poe — the  artists  who 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

were  the  first  to  work  understandingly  with 
intoxicants. 

Let  us  be  honest!  Is  there  any  artist 
who  can  entirely  abstain  from  the  use  of  in 
toxicants?  Do  they  not  all  take  their  little 
poisons:  tea,  tobacco,  coffee,  beer,  or  what 
ever  it  may  be?  Must  not  the  mind  be 
"poisoned"  in  order  to  produce  works  of  art? 
Because  if  the  artist  is  not  poisoned  by  means 
of  his  body,  he  is  in  other  ways. 

For  there  are  quite  a  number  of  other 
ways. 

\  Art  and  Nature  are  always  opposed  to 
one  another.  A  man  who  lives  a  purely  ab 
stemious  life,  physically  and  mentally, — 
whose  ancestors  for  many  generations  have 
also  lived  just  as  abstemiously,  so  that  his 
blood  is  not,  as  it  is  with  all  of  us,  poisoned, 
can  never  become  an  artist,  unless  some 
divine  power  provides  him  with  other  sensa 
tions,  capable  of  awaking  ecstasy.  But 
those  also  act  as  a  poison  upon  the  spirit. 
Nature  and  Art  are  the  deadliest  enemies; 
where  one  reigns  the  other  becomes  impos 
sible. 

10 


EDGAR      ALLAN      POE 

What  is  the  meaning  of  the  word  "artist" 
in  its  truest  sense?  A  pioneer  of  culture  in 
the  newly  discovered  land  of  the  uncon 
scious. 

How  few  are  worthy  to  be  called  artists 
under  this  lofty  definition  of  that  proud 
title!  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann  deserves  it,  and 
Jean  Paul  and  Villiers  and  Baudelaire — 
and  certainly  also  Edgar  Allan  Poe;  this 
much  even  the  Griswolds  must  concede  to 
the  artist  who,  in  so  many  of  his  stories,  en 
tered  that  secret  country  of  the  soul,  of  which 
no  one  before  him,  and  least  of  all  the  scien 
tists,  had  the  slightest  presentiment. 
/  The  eternal  land  of  our  longing  lies 
\  dreamily  before  us  in  grey  misty  clouds, — 
the  vast  land  of  the  unknown.  The  beggar 
lies  huddled  in  the  warm  sunshine, — the  con 
tented  town  folks  hug  their  fire  places. 

But  there  are  people  whose  tormenting 
desires  are  so  great  that  they  must  emerge 
from  the  realm  which  we  know.  Bobur  et 
ces  triplex  must  protect  their  breasts  when 
they  leave  the  sunny  land  of  the  known, 
when  they  steer  through  the  grey  murder- 

11 


EDGAR      ALLAN      POE 

ous  floods  to  Avalon.  And  many,  many 
perish  shamefully  without  having  cast  even 
a  single  glance  behind  the  clouds.  Only  a 
few  can  complete  the  journey.  They  dis 
cover  a  new  land, — accept  it  in  the  name  of 
a  new  culture;  they  have  extended  the  bor 
ders  of  consciousness  a  little  further. 

The  artists  are  these  first  explorers. 
After  them  come  the  hordes  of  expeditions 
of  discoverers  in  order  to  survey  and  investi 
gate  the  country — land  registrars  and  rent 
collectors — men  of  science. 

Now  it  is  certain  that  the  so-called  poisons, 
which  we  call  narcotics,  are  as  potent  as 
other  means  to  lead  us  beyond  the  threshold 
of  the  conscious.  If  one  succeeds  in  getting 
a  firm  footing  in  this  "other  world,"  ex 
changing  the  metaphysical  for  something 
positive,  one  creates  a  new  work  of  art,  and 
is,  in  the  noblest  sense,  an  artist. 

It  may  be  necessary  here  to  accentuate 
that  quality  of  wisdom  which  insists,  of 
course,  that  there  can  be  no  idea  of  creation 
in  intoxication.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
no  intoxicant  in  the  world  can  develop  in 

12 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

a  man  qualities  which  he  does  not  possess. 

The  Griswolds  and  the  Ingrams  could 
take  any  amount  of  wine,  could  smoke  any 
amount  of  opium,  eat  any  amount  of  hash 
ish,  nevertheless  they  would  still  be  unable 
to  create  works  of  art. 

But  the  intoxication  caused  by  narcotics 
is  liable,  under  certain  conditions,  when  ac 
companied  by  other  causes,  to  create  a  state 
of  ecstasy  later  on,  and  in  this  state  of  ec 
stasy  every  one  produces  the  highest  that 
his  intelligence  is  capable  of  conceiving. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  drank.  And,  as  with 
all  of  us,  his  body  proportionately  reacted 
unfavorably  against  the  poison  of  the  al 
cohol,  deadened  as  it  was  by  the  drink-habits 
of  generations  of  ancestors;  so  he  drank 
heavily.  He  got  drunk.  But  he  got  drunk 
purposely,  he  did  it  in  order  to  get  the 
drunkard's  understanding,  from  which  he 
later  on,  perhaps  years  later,  could  create 
new  art  values.  Such  intoxication  is  no  de 
light,  it  'is  an  unbearable  torture ;  consciously 
desired  only  by  him  on  whose  brow  the  liv 
ing  mark  of  art  is  branded. 

13 


EDGAR      ALLAN      POE 

Is  there  a  more  shameful  lie  than'  that  re 
mark  of  the  banal  :  "Artistic  creation  is  not 
work  —  it  is  a  pleasure?"  He  who  says  this 
and  the  great  public  which  thoughtlessly  re 
peat  it,  have  never  felt  the  breath  of  ecstasy, 
which  is  the  only  condition  demanded  by 
art.  And  this  ecstasy  is  always  a  torture, 
even  when  —  in  rare  cases  —  the  cause  which 
produced  it,  was  one  of  rapture. 

They  say  that  it  is  with  joy  that  the 
mother  cat  brings  forth  her  young  —  but  the 
offspring  are  only  poor  blind  little  kittens. 
So  may  the  weekly  contributor  to  the 
Gotham  Gazette,  so  may  the  versifier  of  a 
"Berlin  by  Night"  sheet,  put  his  lines  on 
paper  with  joy  —  a  work  of  art  is  never  born 
without  pain. 


I  wandered  forth  again  —  through  the  ma 
jestic  palace  of  the  fifth  Roman  Emperor 
of  Germany,  who  bore  the  name  of  Karl, 
right  through  the  mighty  portico,  up  through 
the  long  avenue  of  white  blooming  acacias, 
through  the  meadows  blooming  with  many 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

thousand  blue  irises.  The  Tower  of  the 
Princesses  I  had  unlocked  for  me,  where  one 
time  the  Sultan's  daughters  Zayda,  Zorayda, 
and  Zorahayda  at  the  window  secretly  over 
heard  the  songs  of  the  captured  Christian 
knights. 

I  gaze  at  the  valley  beyond  the  hill  from 
which  Boabdil  at  parting  sent  his  last  sigh 
to  lost  Granada.  I  glance  at  the  garden  of 
the  Generalife.  I  can  clearly  see  the  many 
hundred  year  old  cypresses,  under  whose 
shadow  the  last  Moorish  king's  wife,  Hamet, 
came  to  a  tryst  with  the  handsomest  of  the 
Abencerrages,  which  was  to  prove  so  fatal. 

Here  each  stone  relates  a  legend,  that  is 
sadly  fading  away. 

Deep  below  in  the  valley  lies  the  road 
which  leads  up  to  the  City  of  the  Dead.  A 
pair  of  black  goats  graze  on  the  green  slopes. 
Back  below  the  Tower  of  the  Prisoners,  sits 
a  tattered  toll-taker  in  front  of  his  dirty 
cave.  Long-eared  rabbits  graze  about  him, 
— seven  roosters,  already  robbed  of  crest 
and  tail  feathers,  for  the  impending  battle, 
peck  about  the  ground  or  fly  at  each  other, 

15 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

and  far  in  the  East  the  snow  of  the  wild 
Sierra  Nevada  glows  purplish  red. 

A  troop  of  ragged  lads  travel  through  the 
Valley1' — Two  are  carrying  a  little  child's 
coffin  on  their  shoulders — open  according  to 
the  Spanish  custom — another  shoulders  the 
cover.  The  coffin  is  very  simple,  three  yel 
low  boards  and  two  smaller  ones.  But 
within  lie  flowers,  many  flowers,  red,  yel 
low — and  white  and  blue  flowers — from 
under  which  the  waxen  pale  little  face 
framed  in  black  hair  looks  forth.  No  priest, 
no  relatives,  not  even  father  nor  mother  are 
in  the  procession — six  tattered  lads. — 

But  among  so  many  gay  flowers  the  dead 
child  reposes  in  such  fresh  blossoming  fra 
grance.  How  good  that  they  did  not  close 
her  eyes !  Now  she  looks  forth,  interestedly 
from  out  of  the  variegated  flowers — up  to  the 
old  Moorish  King's  Palace — peers  out  of 
the  colored  splendor,  the  little  dead  girl  so 
satisfied  and  happy,  as  she  certainly  never 
was  in  life. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  should  have  sat  here. 
How  he  would  have  dreamed;  how  the  gay 

16 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

legends  would  have  flown  about  his  brow  on 
light  wings!  And  he  would  have  built  a 
new  Alhambra,  in  words  of  bronze,  which 
would  have  outlasted  the  mighty  towers  of 
the  Nasserites  by  many  centuries. 

Here  then  other  means  perhaps  would 
have  created  for  him  a  state  of  ecstasy.  He 
would  probably  not  have  drunk.  But  he 
was  there  in  New  England,  his  poor  poet's 
soul  penned  in  between  realist  prose  writers, 
while  at  the  same  time  Washington  Irving, 
that  model  of  English  conventionality,  was 
allowed  to  dream  under  the  magic  spell  of 
Alhambra  moonshine!  And  his  "Tales  of 
the  Alhambra"  became  world  renowned! 

Day  after  day  I  see  strangers  enter  the 
sacred  places,  in  their  hands  Baedekers;  in 
their  coat  pockets  copies  of  Irving's  book. 
Just  as  they  read  the  "Last  Days  of  Pom 
peii"  in  the  House  of  Vettii  or  that  of 
Dionysos!  Did  the  few  beauties  contained 
in  these  books,  which  undeniably  exist,  ema 
nate  from  Lord  Lytton  or  Irving's  mind? 
O,  no,  a  breath  from  the  Roman  City  of  the 
Dead,  of  the  Moorish  fairy  palace  poured 

17 


EDGAR      ALLAN      POE 

through  their  souls  even  though  they  were 
not  poets,  even  though  they  were  only  little 
middle  class  scribblers.  Neither  Bulwer 
nor  Irving  created  these  beauties,  but  Pom 
peii  and  the  Alhambra  in  spite  of  them. 
*  *  * 

Poe's  glowing  longing  knew  nothing  of 
all  this.  To  emerge  from  his  own  self,  to 
awaken  within  him  an  ecstasy  which  could 
transport  him  from  all  the  familiar  surround 
ings  which  shut  him  in,  there  remained  for 
him  but  one  medium.  Aside  from  very  un 
important  happenings,  little  calculated  to 
induce  ecstasy,  this  most  unfortunate  of 
poets  once  only  received  from  the  outer 
world  the  Muse's  Kiss ;  through  his  beautiful 
beloved  wife,  Virginia  Clemm.  May  the 
Moralist  call  this  intoxication  holy,  god 
like,  may  he  call  the  Poet's  other  ecstasy, 
which  resulted  from  the  use  of  alcohol,  then 
from  opium,  as  unholy  and  fiendish;  that  is 
not  of  interest  to  us.  For  the  artistic  values 
which  are  brought  forth  by  these  are  no  less 
splendid. 

The  godly  ecstasy,  however,  was  hardly 

18 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

less  torturing  for  the  inspired  one  than  the 
infernal  one.  A  Hell  was  to  him  what 
Paradise  is  to  others, — a  well  beloved,  a 
blessed  Hell,  but  the  flames  of  which  never 
theless  scorched.  For  Virginia, — to  whose 
dying  eyes  we  are  indebted  for  Morella,  and 
Ligeia,  Berenice  and  Lenore, — was  doomed 
before  she  had  given  her  hand  to  the  Poet. 
He  knew  that  she  had  consumption,  that  the 
glowing  red  of  her  cheeks  lied,  knew  that 
from  the  depth  of  her  liquid  shimmering 
eyes  the  inexorable  sickness  grinned  forth. 
When  at  night  he  stroked  the  beloved  locks 
he  knew:  "So  many  days  yet  she  will  live," 
and  the  next  morning  again  "Another  day 
less."  It  was  a  dying  woman  who  kissed 
his  lips,  a  dying  woman,  whose  lovely  head 
rested  next  to  his  at  night.  When  he  awoke 
disturbed  by  the  coughing  and  rattling  in 
her  panting  lungs — the  white  linen  seemed 
to  him  a  shroud,  the  cold  drops  on  her  brow, 
the  sweat  of  death,  a  lingering  death,  lasting 
for  years,  a  visible  slow  fading  of  the  be 
loved — this  was  the  only  "happiness"  of  this 
most  unhappy  of  all  poets. 

19 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

Yes,  this  beautiful  doomed  wife,  called 
forth  emotions, — but  they  were  emotions  of 
fear,  of  silent  repressed  pain — of  despair  in 
a  laughing  disguise;  a  Paradise  of  Torture. 
Read  the  most  beautiful  tales  Virginia 
sowed  in  his  soul;  you  will  feel  a  breath  of 
the  unspeakable  torture  in  which  they  were 
born. 

Before  the  last  threads  of  life  were  torn 
asunder,  and  the  silent  woman  lowered  into 
the  grave,  Edgar  Allan  Poe  wrote  his  mas 
terpiece  "The  Raven";  and  the  state  of  ec 
stasy  which  brought  forth  this  poem,  which 
has  no  equal  in  the  whole  literature  of  the 
world,  (I  would  like  to  shout  this  fact  into 
the  faces  of  the  English  hypocrites),  was 
caused  by  the  despair  of  his  bleeding  heart 
for  this  dying  one,  as  well  as  by  the  com 
mon,  low  intoxication  of  the  wine  cup. 

Each  alienist  who  has  specialized  in  the 
effects  of  intoxication,  will  readily  recognize 
those  parts  of  "The  Raven"  which  sprang 
from  delirium  with  absolute  certainty.  It  is 
quite  simple  for  the  psychologist  to  trace 
the  other  rapture  which  the  artist  owes  to 

20 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

Virginia,  his  "lost  Lenore."  And  here  let 
us  compare  the  sincere,  marvelously  clear 
essay  which  Poe  wrote  about  the  creation  of 
this  poem.  Each  stanza,  each  line,  each 
single  sound  of  words,  he  motivates  in  start  - 
lingly  simple  logic;  it  is  almost  as  though  he 
wanted  to  demonstrate  a  geometrical  prob 
lem.  It  may  be  true  that  the  main  sub 
ject,  the  ecstasy,  and  its  origin  iri  holy  and 
— O,  such  very  unholy,  intoxication, — is  not 
|  mentioned  by  any  word. — This  essay  was 
written  for  the  New  England  readers  of 
magazines, — how  could  they  have  under 
stood  a  poet  who  spoke  of  ecstasy?  The 
workmanship — the  purely  technical  part, 
that  which  signifies  the  art,  that  which  is 
supported  by  knowledge — that  was  never 
demonstrated  by  any  Poet  as  clearly  and 
convincingly  as  in  this  essay.  A  veritable 
text  book  of  poetry,  of  one  master  piece. — 
Certainly  as  a  guide  the  Philistine  cannot 
use  it ;  for  the  artist,  however,  it  is  the  most 
important  book  of  instruction  existing.  He 
may  learn  from  it  that  godlike  intoxication 
alone  does  not  create  an  absolute  work  of 

21 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

art,  that  the  common  work,  the  despised 
technique,  the  reflection  and  polishing,  the 
weighing  and  filing,  are  quite  as  indispens 
able  for  its  perfection. 

Not  the  mighty  mind  alone  of  the  Arabian 
architect  created  the  glorious  Alhambra. — 
Masons,  mule-drivers,  gardeners,  and 
painters, — each  brought  his  little  part  to 
bear. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  the  first  poet  who 
spoke  with  such  candor  of  literary  labor,  of 
the  craftsman's  work  alone.  In  this,  and 
probably  only  in  this,  his  attitude  was  that 
of  the  American.  As  such  he  stood,  and 
what  is  more,  at  the  threshold  of  modern 
thought,  he  ranks  as  the  pioneer — a  brilliant 
demonstration  of  the  intrinsic  value  of  this 
Artist,  who  speaks  only  of  technique  and 
with  no  word  mentions  intuition  which  the 
amateur  always  carries  on  his  tongue.  Per 
haps  if  he  had  written  for  other  readers  in 
his  magazine,  he  might  have  gone  one  step 
further,  and  have  told  them  about  the  tech 
nique  of  intoxication. 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

Never  before  him  did  any  one  so  dismem 
ber  his  own  work  of  art,  and  dissect  it  to  its 
last  shred.  The  divine  breath  dictated  by 
the  Bible  haunts  the  faith  of  the  masses  until 
our  very  day  and  the  artists  by  the  "grace  of 
the  Lord,"  were  careful  not  to  destroy  this 
fable  of  inspiration.  When  the  Holy  Ghost 
touched  them,  they  swooned, — composed, 
wrote  poetry, — and  gave  birth  to  more  or  less 
immaculate  children  of  spirit.  That  was 
so  pretty,  so  comfortable,  that  certainly 
some  of  the  great  artists  would  gladly  have 
believed  in  this  secret  consecration.  "Drunk 
with  godliness"  was  said  of  the  Thracian 
poet,  even  were  he  as  sober  as  Socrates. 
This  thought,  which  in  its  Dionysic  origin 
coincides  with  our  modern  view  of  intoxica 
tion  and  ecstasy,  according  to  the  later  point 
of  view,  received  the  Lord's  anointment, 
and,  like  so  many  other  clear  thoughts,  which 
it  was  able  to  obscure,  was  taken  up  in  the 
Christian  conception  of  life  with  great  en 
thusiasm.  All  the  beautiful  phrases  of  the 
Knights  of  Olympus,  of  the  Kiss  of  the 

23 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

Muses,  of  the  divine  ecstasy,  of  the  divine 
predestination  of  artists — by  which  we, 
Heaven  be  praised,  are  no  longer  impressed ! 
—have  their  origin  in  this. 

It  required  courage  to  dissipate  these 
sparkling  mists;  few,  very  few  myths  about 
world's  literature  can  stand  such  a  relentless 
decomposition.  But  because  Poe  in  his 
Raven  created  a  work  of  art  so  clean,  so 
finished,  he  could  risk  such  a  step.  The 
petty,  the  ridiculous  and  absurd,  which  other 
wise  draw  the  sublime  into  the  dust,  can  do 
nothing  against  this  perfection. 

My  glance  falls  on  the  wall  coverings  of 
this  hall.  In  the  style  of  Mudejar,  the 
Arabesque  and  Coptic  sentences  become  en 
twined. 

The  eye  is  never  surfeited  with  these  fan 
tastic  harmonies.  Now  this  marvel  of 
Arabic  art  is  composed  of  plaster — just  com 
mon  plaster, — how  laughable,  how  paltry, 
how  absurd!  But  though  composed  of  mis 
erable  plaster  this  colossal  work  of  art  loses 
nothing  of  its  sublimity.  The  ordinary  me 
dium  exhales  the  breath  of  the  spirit  that  in- 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

spired  it.  Art  triumphs  over  nature,  and 
this  art  is  so  great  that  the  recognition  of 
the  common  medium  is  superfluous. 

Poe  did  not  need  this  time-honored  coat 
of  lies.  He  saw  that  it  was  threadbare  and 
torn  and  boldly  threw  it  aside.  In  the  few 
words  with  which  he  characterizes  the  un 
derstanding  of  intuition  in  "Eureka"  as 
"the  conviction  arising  from  those  induc 
tions  or  deductions  of  which  the  processes 
are  so  shadowy  as  to  escape  our  conscious 
ness,  elude  our  reason,  or  defy  our  capacity 
of  expression" — there  was  a  clearer  recogni 
tion  of  the  ways  of  artistic  creation  than 
any  of  his  contemporaries  had.  While  the 
Poet-philosopher  therefore  in  opposition  to 
the  so-called  "Intuition"  of  philosophy — es 
pecially  in  reference  to  Aristotle,  and  Bacon, 
with  whom  he  disputes  makes  allowance  for 
this,  which  the  latter  denies;  he  at  the  same 
time  determines  its  value  in  a  limited  un- 
theological  modern  sense.  This  shows  the 
gigantic  spirit  of  this  foremost  being  en 
dowed  with  a  modern  mind,  that  he,  the  ro 
manticist,  the  dreamer,  still  is  a  worshipper 

25 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

of  logic,  who  never  lost  the  ground  beneath 
his  feet. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  the  first  one  openly 
to  acknowledge  the  technique  of  thought — 
and  anticipated  Zola's  "genius  is  applica 
tion"  by  decades.  And  this  same  Edgar 
Allan  Poe  wrote  in  his  preface  to  Eureka — 
"To  the  few  who  love  me  and  whom  I  love 
— to  those  who  feel  rather  than  to  those  who 
think — to  the  dreamers  and  those  who  put 
faith  in  dreams  as  in  the  only  realities, — I 
offer  this  book  of  Truths,  not  in  its  charac 
ter  of  Truth-Teller,  but  for  the  Beauty  that 
abounds  in  its  Truth,  constituting  it  true. 
To  these  I  present  the  composition  as  an 
Art-Product  alone, — let  us  say  a  Romance ; 
or,  if  I  be  not  urging  too  lofty  a  claim,  as 
a  Poem. 

"What  I  here  propound  is  true: — there 
fore  it  cannot  die;  or  if  by  any  means  it  be 
now  trodden  down,  so  that  it  die,  it  will  rise 
again  to  the  'Life  Everlasting.' ' 

So  Poe,  absolutely  independent  of  Gau- 
tier,  sets  up  his  Art  for  Art's  Sake  princi 
ple, — greater  than  Gautier  who  only  saw 

26 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

beauty  with  the  eyes  of  the  painter,  he  places 
his  demand.  And  he  is  also  deeper  than 
Gautier,  to  whom  the  outward  form  alone 
was  a  manifestation  of  beauty.  Beauty  \ 
first  creates  truth  for  him  into  truth — whose 
right  to  existence  without  beauty  he  denies. 
— This  is  the  greatest  demand  ever  made  of 
Art,  and  as  this  demand  can  be  fulfilled  only 
in  desires,  dreams  to  him  are  the  only  real 
ity,  and  he  denies  all  real  value  to  active 
life.  Here,  too,  Poe  the  Romanticist,  is  a 
pathfinder — and  is  the  first  one  to  disclose 
what  is  called  "Modern  Thought." 

If  he  anticipated  Zola's  coined  expression 
of  technical  production,  if  he  furthermore 
set  up  the  Parnassian  art  principle  independ 
ent  of  this,  he  bridged  the  gap  of  half  a  cen 
tury  and  made  a  demand  so  ultra-modern 
that,  even  today,  only  a  small  part  of  the 
advanced  spirits  understand  it  in  its  whole 
radical  magnitude. 

The  fertility  of  the  literature  of  the  cul 
tured  peoples  will  through  Poe's  spirit  first 
attain  full  development  in  this  century.  The 
past  one  judged  him  by  a  few  outward 

27 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

trivialities,  a  hawing  and  hemming,  which 
certainly  brought  a  fortune  to  Jules  Verne 
and  Conan  Doyle,  the  fortunate  imitators. 
It  is  certain  that  the  starving  poet  only  wrote 
these  things  for  his  daily  bread.  The  Sea 
and  Moon  Journeys  of  Gordon  Pym  and 
Hans  Pfaal,  etc.,  also  several  of  his  detec 
tive  stories  as,  for  instance  "The  Murder  in 
The  Rue  Morgue"  "The  Purloined  Letter" 
"The  Gold  Bug,"  were  certainly  called 
into  existence  only  by  the  desire  to  have 
warmth,  food  and  drink.  For  Poe  knew 
hunger.  Therefore  he  wrote  those  things, 
as  he  also  did  translations,  and  worked  at  all 
possible  sorts  of  scientific  books.  Surely, 
each  single  story,  even  the  weakest,  far  sur 
passes  any  adventure  of  the  eminent  Sher 
lock  Holmes. — Why  does  the  great  public, 
and  especially  the  English  speaking  public, 
in  spite  of  all  this,  swallow  Doyle's  ridicu 
lous  detective  stories  with  enthusiasm,  and 
lay  those  of  Poe  aside? 

Nothing  is  easier  to  understand.  Poe's 
characters  are  like  those  of  Dostoevski's,  so 
real,  his  composition  is  so  faultless,  so  holds 

28 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

the  imagination  of  the  reader  without  possi 
bility  of  escape  in  its  nets,  that  even  the 
bravest  cannot  resist  a  shudder,  an  agoniz 
ing,  murderous  shudder,  which  resembles  a 
cruel  nightmare. 

In  the  works  of  popular  imitators  this 
fear  is  nothing  more  than  a  pleasant  sensa 
tion,  which  not  for  one  moment  permits  the 
reader  to  doubt  the  outcome  of  the  farce. 
The  reader  always  knows  that  this  is  all 
stupid  nonsense;  in  this  case  he  is  standing 
above  the  narrator.  This  is  the  author's  in 
tention.  Poe,  however,  grasps  the  reader, 
hurls  him  down  the  precipice  and  flings  him 
into  hell,  so  that  the  poor  simpleton  loses 
all  sense  of  hearing  and  seeing,  and  is  com 
pletely  at  sea.  Therefore  the  good  citizen 
who  wants  to  sleep  quietly,  prefers  the  stage 
hero  of  Baker  Street,  and  draws  the  line  at 
Poe's  gigantic  nightmares.  One  sees  that 
even  when  he  desired  to  be  middle  class, 
where  he  desired  to  write  for  the  great 
masses,  his  aim  is  still  too  high.  He  ad 
dressed  middle  class  intellect  and  imagined 
himself  to  be  speaking  to  his  equals:  To 

29 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

carry  his  brain  to  market  he  ran  about  from 
publisher  to  publisher — to  those  who  wanted 
to  buy  straw. 

*     *     * 

But  a  future  time  will  be  ripe  for  the 
Poet's  gifts.  We  already  recognize  the  path 
which  leads  from  Jean  Paul  and  E.  T.  A. 
Hoffmann  to  Baudelaire  and  Edgar  Allan 
Poe,  the  only  path  which  art,  the  outcome  of 
culture,  can  take !  Already  we  have  several 
efforts  in  this  direction. 

This  art  will  no  longer  be  confined  within 
national  bounds.  It  will  be  conscious  of  it 
self  as  was  Edgar  Allan  Poe  conscious  that 
it  does  not  exist  for  "its  own  people"  but 
alone  for  the  thin  ranks  of  cultured  taste,  be 
these  of  Germanic  or  Japanese,  of  Latin  or 
Jewish  nationality. 

No  artist  ever  worked  for  "his  people," 
alone,  and  yet  almost  every  artist  desired  to 
do  so  and  believed  he  had  accomplished  this. 
The  great  masses  in  Spain  know  absolutely 
as  little  of  Velasquez  and  Cervantes  as  the 
English  working  man  does  of  Shakespeare 
and  Byron,  as  the  French  do  of  Rabelais  and 

30 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

Moliere,  as  the  Hollander  does  of  Rem 
brandt  and  Rubens.  The  German  masses 
have  not  the  slightest  notion  of  Goethe  and 
Schiller.  They  do  not  even  know  the  names 
of  Heine  and  Burger.  The  series  of  ques 
tions  or  the  answers  made  by  the  soldiers 
to  the  questions  put  to  the  soldiers  of  cer 
tain  regiments:  "Who  was  Bismarck? 
Who  was  Goethe?"  should  at  length  open 
the  eyes  of  the  most  optimistic.  A  whole 
world  divides  the  cultured  man  of  Germany 
from  his  countrymen,  whom  he  meets  daily 
in  the  street ;  a  nothing — a  canal — separates 
him  from  the  cultured  element  in  America. 
Heine  felt  this  and  preached  this  openly 
to  the  people  of  Frankfort.  Edgar  Allan 
Poe  expressed  it  even  more  distinctly. 
Most  artists,  however,  and  the  learned  and 
cultivated  of  all  nations  had  such  a  slight 
understanding  of  this,  that  unto  this  day 
Horace's  fine  "Odi  Profanum"  is  misinter 
preted.  The  artist  who  wishes  to  create  for 
his  own  people  alone  attempts  the  impos 
sible,  and  for  this  purpose  he  very  often 
neglects  something  attainable  and  greater, 

31 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

the  possibility  of  creating  for  the  whole 
world.  Above  the  German,  above  the  Brit 
ish  and  French,  there  stands  a  higher  na 
tion.  The  nation  of  culture!  To  create 
for  that  is  alone  worthy  of  the  artist.  Here 
on  this  soil  Poe  was  at  home  even  as  Goethe 
though  in  a  different,  equally  conscious,  but 
less  modern  sense. 

*     *     * 

Very  slowly  I  pace  about  in  the  park  of 
the  Alhambra  under  the  old  elms  which 
Wellington  planted.  On  all  sides  fountains 
murmur,  mingling  their  voices  with  the 
sweet  songs  of  hundreds  of  nightingales. 
Among  the  turreted  towers  I  walk  in  the 
luxuriant  vale  of  the  Alhambra.  To  whom 
does  this  magic  palace,  this  garden  of  dreams 
belong?  To  the  Spanish  nation  of  beggars 
which  I  despise?  To  the  mob  of  strangers 
with  their  guide-books  in  their  hands,  whose 
path  I  avoid  by  ten  paces  at  least?  O,  no! 
This  palace,  this  garden  of  dreams  belongs 
to  me,  and  to  the  few  who  are  qualified  to 
absorb  these  beauties,  whose  breath  brings 
life  to  these  rocks,  to  these  shrubs.  Whose 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

spirit  can  transform  all  this  beauty  into 
truth?  Everything  about  me,  and  all  else 
which  is  beautiful  on  this  earth,  is  the  sacred 
inviolable  property  of  the  cultured  people, 
who  stand  above  all  other  nations.  That 
Nation  is  the  true  ruler,  the  true  possessor. 
No  other  master  is  tolerated  by  beauty.  To 
understand  this  means  to  understand  the 
world.  Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  the  first  to 
do  this. 

I  sit  on  the  stone  bench  on  which 
Aboul  Haddjadj  once  dreamed.  A  foun 
tain  bubbles  up  before  me — and  falls  into  the 
round  marble  basin.  I  know  quite  well  why 
the  Sultan  sat  here  alone  in  the  twilight: 
Oh,  it  is  so  very  sweet  to  dream  here ! 

There  was  once  a  Poet  who  recorded 
nothing  but  conversations  with  the  dead. 
He  chatted  with  all  the  seven  sages,  and 
with  all  the  kings  of  Nineveh,  and  with 
Egyptian  priests  and  Thessalian  witches, 
with  Athenian  singers,  with  Roman  gen 
erals  and  with  King  Arthur's  Round  Table. 
At  last  he  had  no  desire  left  to  speak  with 
any  living  being.  The  dead  are  so  much 

33 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

more  interesting.  Oh,  one  can  speak  with 
them,  certainly.  All  dreamers  can  do  so 
and  all  those  who  believe  in  dreams,  as  in  the 
only  reality. 

Did  I  not  wander  today  with  him  I  love, 
through  the  halls  of  the  Palace?  Did  I  not 
reveal  to  the  dead  Poet  part  of  the  beauty 
of  the  world,  never  seen  by  mortal  eye? 
Now  he  stands  here  beside  me,  leaning 
against  the  elm.  "Only  ask  me,"  he  says. 

He  seems  to  feel  how  my  eyes  caress  and 
question  him — and  he  speaks.  At  times  the 
words  drop  clearly  from  his  lips;  at  times 
his  voice  ripples  from  the  fountain;  it  sings 
from  out  of  the  throats  of  the  nightingales 
and  rustles  in  the  leaves  of  the  old  elms.  So 
wise  are  the  dead. 

"Do  not  touch  upon  my  poor  life,"  says 
Edgar  Allan  Poe.  "Question  Goethe  who 
was  a  prince  and  could  afford  six  stallions 
with  which  to  tear  through  the  world.  I 
was  alone." 

I  do  not  remove  my  eyes  from  him. 

"Tell  those  who  love  you  and  whom  you 
love." 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

"The  life  I  lived,  I  have  forgotten,"  he 
said.  "O,  not  only  since  my  death,  as  the 
small  mortals  think — each  day  I  forgot  to 
remember  the  morrow.  Otherwise  how 
could  I  have  continued  to  live? — My  real 
life  though,  my  life  of  dreams,  you  know." 
.  .  .  From  the  ground  a  light  mist  glides 
through  the  evening,  a  sweet  cool  breeze  fans 
my  brow.  Certainly :  the  life  of  his  dreams 
was  very  well  known  to  me,  he  gave  it  to  me 
as  well  as  to  the  world.  And  slowly  this 
pageant  of  his  creations  which  represents 
his  life  glides  past  me. 

*     *     * 

William  Wilson.  Of  course  it  is  Poe.  So 
truly  Poe  that  the  dominie  Griswold  calmly 
gives  the  year  of  Wilson's  birth — 1813 — 
as  that  of  the  Poet's.  The  boy  rules  in  the 
old  boarding  school  of  Stoke-Newington 
over  all  his  fellow  students;  only  not  over 
one — the  other  Wilson,  himself.  And  he 
whose  inherited  frivolous  tastes  again  and 
again  turned  the  boy,  the  youth  and  the  man 
into  a  vagabond,  cannot  rid  himself  of  his 
conscience,  of  that  other  Wilson — himself. 

35 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

In  spite  of  his  conscience  his  tendency  to 
crime  tosses  him  about  the  world,  and  over 
and  over  again  he  convicts  himself.*  Thus 
the  poetV  boyhood  and  his  youth  were 
poisoned.  His  inherited  sense  of  good  and 
evil  which  had  been  more  strongly  developed 
by  his  education  is  so  overstrong  in  him 
that  he  cannot  disentangle  himself  from  his 
conflicting  emotions,  and  is  almost  wrecked 
by  them.  Each  little  wrong  he  has  com 
mitted  takes  •  on  colossal  proportions  in  his 
dreams  and  plagues  and  torments  him. 
Still  more,  sins  of  conscience,  entertaining 
the  idea  of  evil  alone,  become  a  reality  in  his 
dreams.  He  sees  himself  as  the  hero  of  all 
his  terrible  tales.  The  sins  of  the  fathers 
are  avenged  upon  the  last  scion  of  the  race; 
like  Frederick  of  Metzengerstein  in  his  own 
story,  he  himself  rides  through  all  the  flames 
of  hell,  on  his  devilish  steed. 
#  #  # 

.  .  .  How  the  elm  trees  murmur.     And  I 

*  His  biographer,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Griswold,  nevertheless  re 
marks,  that  in  all  literature  there  is  no  other  instance  in 
which  one  so  utterly  misses  every  vestige  of  conscience,  as 
in  the  case  of  Poe. 

36 


EDGAR      ALLAN      POE 

hear  the  voice  of  the  accursed  from  out  of 
the  winds: 

"Had  I  not  been  a  poet,  I  probably  should 
have  become  a  murderer,  a  cheat,  a  thief,  a 
robber  and  a  trickster." 

The  leaves  of  the  elms  sing  and  again  a 
voice  whispers: 

"And  perhaps  I  would  have  been  hap 
pier." 


And  I  think, — who  can  tell? — Has  there 
ever  been  a  criminal  whose  deeds  created  a 
martyrdom  for  him  such  as  the  Poet  felt  for 
crimes  which  he  had  never  committed?  For 
Poe  in  his  dreams,  which  were  his  only  ac 
tual  life,  is  not  only  the  murderer,  but  also 
the  victim.  He  immures  his  enemy  while 
still  alive  in  a  cellar.  And  it  is  he  himself 
who  is  walled  in.  ("The  Cask  of  Amontil 
lado.")  He  murders,  because  he  must,  the 
man  with  the  eagle  eye, — he  buries  him  under 
the  planks,  and  the  heart  which  is  beating 
below  this,  and  which  at  last  discloses  the 
deed,  is  again  his  own.  ("The  Tell-Tale 

37 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

Heart.")  We  find  the  double  of  William 
Wilson  everywhere. 

Rarely  has  an  artist  stood  so  little  out 
side  of  that  which  he  created,  never  did  one 
so  live  within  his  works.  A  German,  a 
Frenchman  would  have  more  easily  emanci 
pated  himself  from  this  fatal  idea  of  moral- 
\  ity.  The  Poet,  however,  by  inheritance 
and  education  suffered  from  a  piety  which 
enslaved  his  soul,  and  from  which  he  could 
never  entirely  free  himself.  Only  later  in 
life  could  he  assume  an  objective  attitude; 
he  never  stood  entirely  outside  of  all  good 
and  evil.  The  old  English  curse  oppressed 
him,  no  torture  was  spared  him;  this  poor 
soul  had  to  endure  all  the  maddest  tortures 
of  hell,  the  cup  of  which  Brueghel,  Jean  van 
Bosch  and  Goya  emptied  unto  the  last 
dregs. 

Had  he  been  a  criminal  in  reality  instead 
of  in  thought,  had  he  ended  his  days  on  the 
gallows  instead  of  in  the  charity  hospital, 
his  life  would  have  been  poverty-stricken 
and  miserable — but  not  as  terrible  as  it  was. 

But  temples  arise  from  fields  strewn  with 

38 


EDGAR      ALLAN      POE 

skulls,  fields  of  lilies  blossomed  from  blood 
stained  meadows.  And  we  blessed  ones  en 
joy  the  wonderful  flowers  which  grew  out  of 
the  Poet's  poisoned  imagination, — the  price 
of  his  soul. 

*    *     * 

The  brooklets  ripple  through  the  park  of 
the  Alhambra.  Merry  little  brooklets  that 
murmur  and  gurgle!  In  their  narrow  peb 
bled  beds  they  hurriedly  flow  past,  as  quickly 
as  the  happy  hours  in  the  poet's  life  glided  by 
him; — those  hours,  or  minutes,  perhaps,  in 
which  he  could  be  innocently  happy. 

Then  he  would  dream  a  merry  dream, — 
perhaps  of  the  man  with  the  wonderful  big 
nose  which  charmed  the  whole  world,  which 
artists  painted  and  princesses  kissed.  In 
this  delightful  little  story,  which  in  its  bizarre 
style  is  a  forerunner  of  Mark  Twain's  (only 
that  with  Poe  the  grotesque  exaggerations 
appear  much  finer,  much  more  natural) 
there  is  no  ostentation  of  wordplay. 

He  laughs  at  the  poor  man's  meals  which 
the  weekly  papers  dish  up  to  their  good 
natured  readers,  he  teaches  Miss  Zenobia 

39 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

how  to  write  a  clever  article  for  Blackwood's 
Magazine,  permits  the  most  worthy  Mr. 
Thingum  Bob  of  the  "Lantern"  to  gossip 
entertainingly  about  his  literary  adventures. 
So  light,  so  amiable,  and  so  ingratiating  is 
the  Poet's  wit, — like  the  little  springs  which 
merrily  gurgle  through  the  park  of  the  Al- 

hambra ! 

»     *     4 

But  like  the  nightingale,  he  sobs  forth  his 
dreams  of  longing.  And  his  voice  seems 
formed  from  out  of  the  nightingale's  soul, 
so  pure,  so  spotless.  Saint  Cecilia  would 
fain  break  her  violin  with  envy,  and  Apollo 
shatter  his  lyre.  If  the  Poet  found  no  hell 
too  deep  for  his  dream  of  crime,  no  heaven 
was  too  high  for  his  songs  of  beauty. 

In  none  of  Poe's  works  do  we  find  one 
sentence,  one  little  allusion  based  upon 
sexual  love.  To  no  other  poet  was  eroti 
cism  as  foreign  as  to  Poe,  except  possibly 
Scheerbart. 

Just  as  little  can  we  find  one  strain  of 
social  sentiment  in  his  works.  And  yet 
there  is  a  heart  in  his  breast,  which  longs  for 

40 


EDGAR      ALLAN      POE 

love,  to  which  love's  communications  are  an 
absolute  necessity.  It  is  only  that  he  can 
not  love  man,  because  he  sees  the  little  faults 
which  repel  him  on  all  sides,  which  cause 
him  to  refuse  the  hand  held  out  for  love's 
caresses,  and  to  silence  the  flattering  word 
on  his  lips.  Then  he  turns  his  longing  to 
do  good  towards  animals — pats  the  dog, 
feeds  the  hungry  cat,  and  is  thankful  for  a 
faithful  look,  for  a  satisfied  purring.  How 
conscious  the  Poet  was  of  all  this  is  seen  in 
his  tale,  "The  Black  Cat,"  in  which  he  em 
phasizes  his  love  of  animals,  and  says  that 
he  "derived  from  it  one  of  my  principal 
sources  of  pleasure."  If  it  was  one  of  the 
"principal  sources  of  pleasure"  in  a  poor 
life,  it  was  certainly  one  of  the  few,  that  did 
not  mingle  pleasure  with  pain, — for  the  pure 
love  for  his  dying  wife  but  caused  him  joys 
mingled  only  with  frightful  tortures. 

The  Edgar  Allan  Poe  that  is  Roderick 
Usher  had,  like  the  angel  Israfil  of  the 
Koran,  a  lute  in  place  of  his  heart.  When 
he  looked  at  his  beloved  wife,  his  heart 
sobbed,  and  his  lute  sang :  it  sang  pure  songs 

41 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

of  longing,  whose  tones  sound  in  one's  ears 
with  sweetest  thrills — it  sang  pure  tales  of 
Morella  and  Berenice — of  Lenore  and 
Ligeia.  The  same  inner  music  which  throbs 
through  the  Raven,  and  Ulalume,  and  which 
is  perhaps  the  highest  in  Art,  echoes  through 
these  poems  in  prose;  and  the  words  with 
which  the  Poet  accompanied  his  "Song  of 
the  Universe"  is  meant  also  for  these  tones: 
"They  cannot  die;  or  if  by  any  means  they 
be  now  trodden  down  so  that  they  die,  they 
will  rise  again  to  the  Life  Everlasting." 

Yes,  they  have  eternal  worth;  they  will 
live  through  the  short  space  of  life  which  we 
mortals  call  everlasting;  which,  however,  is 
the  highest  to  which  even  a  human  being  can 
attain,  even  in  all  times  to  come. 

Poe's  value  as  a  poet  has  not  at  any  time 
been  greater  than  in  our  own,  for  in  our 
time,  particularly  in  our  period,  he  can  teach 
us  much.  Poe  is  no  longer  a  problem;  he 
has  become  a  personality,  which  lies  clearly 
before  all  those  who  have  the  power  to  see. 
The  consciousness  of  his  art  brought  forth 
by  intoxication,  the  emphasizing  of  the 

42 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

meaning  of  technique,  the  clear  recognition 
of  the  Parnassian  principles  of  art  in  their 
broadest  meaning,  the  powerful  demonstra 
tion  of  the  high  value  of  the  inner  rhythm  of 
all  poetry;  all  these  are  moments,  which  have 
individually  been  accentuated  by  many 
others,  though  in  their  entirety,  and  in  their 
penetrating  relation,  they  have  been  rec 
ognized  by  no  artist  as  by  this  New  Eng 
land  poet — and  as  these  moments  represent 
that  which  can  be  called  the  furthering  of  the 
modern  spirits  in  the  art  of  culture  in  their 
entirety,  the  study  of  the  works  of  Poe  is 
more  gratifying  to  the  artist  and  to  the  ed 
ucated  layman  than  any  other.  That  it  is 
impossible  to  promote  these  studies  by  means 
of  translations  is  obvious.  One  can  grow 
to  know  and  admire  the  artist  through  trans 
lations,  but  to  penetrate  into  his  innermost 
being,  it  is  necessary  to  read  him  in  the  origi 
nal  form.  This  may  be  said  of  all  poets, 
but  of  none  more  than  of  Poe. 


The  nightingales  still  sing,  and  from  out 

43 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

of  their  little  throats  bursts  forth  the  voice 
of  the  Poet  I  love.  The  soft  winds  fold 
their  wings — the  leaves  of  the  elms  cease 
their  rustling.  Even  the  drizzling  little 
rivulets  stop  their  whisperings.  The  park 
of  the  Alhambra  listens  to  the  songs  of  the 
nightingales. 

Through  hundreds  of  years  at  eventide 
these  sweet  sounds  have  sung  these  old  tow 
ers  and  walls  to  sleep,  and  today,  too,  they 
are  still  the  same  confiding  notes,  but  dif 
ferent — very  different.  A  dead  Poet's  lute- 
like  heart  is  beating,  and  his  soul's  songs 
are  sung  by  the  little  birds.  So  the  brook 
and  the  trees  listen,  the  red  quarry  stones 
are  barkening — the  purple  glowing  peaks  of 
the  snow  capped  mountains  are  listening 
too :  an  endless  sigh  floats  through  the  great 
garden  from  out  of  the  west.  It  is  the  glow 
of  the  setting  sun,  which  is  sadly  taking 
leave  of  a  Poet's  sublime  song. 

The  twilight  breathes  through  the  elm 
trees  and  filmy  shadows  of  fog  rise  from  the 
laurel  bushes;  they  rise  from  out  of  the 
Moorish  palace  of  spirits.  In  a  long  train 

44 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

they  file  past  us,  and  seat  themselves  about 
on  the  marble  benches.  I  know  very  well 
who  they  are — they  are  poets  of  Granada, 
— Jews  and  Arabs.  Very  close  to  me  sits 
Gabirol,  then  Ibnu-1-Khattib — and  Ibn 
Esra  and  Jehuda  ben  Halevy  and  Mo 
hammed  Ibn  Khaldun,  and  Ibn  Batuta. 
Hundreds  of  dead  Poets  are  silently  listen 
ing  to  the  song  of  the  nightingales.  They 
all  know  what  the  grey  little  birds  are  sing 
ing  today, — so  do  the  dead  understand. 
They  hear  the  heart  of  the  angel  Israfil,  of 
whom  the  Koran  speaks,  and  praise  God, 
who  has  awakened  all  these  tones.  Ouala 
glidliba  iW  Allahta  'old — murmur  the  misty 
shadows  of  the  Alhambra. 

And  the  nightingales  sing  of  dark  secrets, 
of  the  pure  sources  of  life,  and  a  great  long 
ing  fills  my  soul.  They  sing  of  that  secret 
thought  which  created  all  and  penetrates 
all,  of  the  world  creating  breath,  which  fills 
the  whole  universe  with  unending  love. 
They  sing  of  the  beauty  which  only  turns 
all  truth  into  reality,  of  the  dreams  which 
only  make  life  real. 

45 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

Poe's  soul  is  singing — and  a  hundred  dead 
poets  listen  to  the  refrain.  And  from  their 
lips  fall  again  the  ancient  words — Ouala 
ghaliba  ill'  Allahta  'ala — so  grateful  are  the 

dead. 

*     *     * 

And  night  descends  more  deeply  upon  us. 
The  nightingales  are  silent  and  the  east  wind 
rises  over  the  Sierras ;  then  the  filmy  shadows 
disappear;  again  I  am  alone  in  the  magic 
garden  of  the  Alhambra. — Alone  with  the 
soul  of  a  great  artist,  and  as  the  wind  drives 
through  the  leaves  the  old  elms  rustle  and 
sing  of  "Ulalume"  strange  ballad  of  the 
Poet's  awful  dream. 

The  skies  they  were  ashen  and  sober ; 

The  leaves  they  were  crisped  and  sere — 

The  leaves  they  were  withering  and  sere — 
It  was  night  in  the  lonesome  October 

Of  my  most  immemorial  year; 
It  was  hard  by  the  dim  lake  of  Auber, 

In  the  misty  mid  region  of  Weir — 
It  was  down  by  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber 

In  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 
Here  once,  through  an  alley  Titanic 
Of  cypress  I  roamed  with  my  soul —  .  .  . 

I  know  full  well  that  it  is  I  who  speak 

46 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

these  lines,  but  I  feel  that  my  lips  say  noth 
ing  else  than  that  which  the  elm  trees  whis 
per  there.  I  feel — I  feel — that  it  is  the  sad 
October  song  of  the  howling  winds  which  a 
poet's  heavenly  longing  has  absorbed  and 
crystallized  into  words.  It  is  the  absorption 
of  the  innermost  sense  of  nature ;  it  is  a  sur 
render  of  the  soul  to  the  universe,  and  at 
the  same  time  a  penetration  into  the  uni 
verse,  which  is  the  primitive  form  of  all  ex 
istence.  That  is  a  slight  proof  of  the  poet's 
highest  law  of  "unity  as  the  origin  of  all 
things." 

My  lips  repeat  the  secret  words — which 
the  wind  carries  to  my  ears.  Fear  over 
comes  me  in  this  gloomy  solitude,  in  which 
ages  dim  as  fairy  land  are  born  again.  I 
want  to  escape  from  the  valley  of  the  Al- 
hambra.  My  foot  errs,  gropes  in  the  dark, 
and  loses  its  way,  and  as  I  reach  the  end  of 
a  lane  of  mighty  cypress  trees,  I  strike 
against  a  low  gate.  Fright  teaches  us  to 
see  in  the  dark. — I  know,  I  know  whose 
grave  this  is.  And  against  my  will,  my  lips 
repeat  to  my  soul— 

47 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

"What  is  written,  sweet  sister, 

On  the  door  of  this  legended  tomb?" 
She  replied — "Ulalume — Ulalume — 
'Tis  the  vault  of  thy  lost  Ulalume!" 

My  terror  grows.  The  soul  of  the  dead 
Poet — which  fluttered  in  the  trees,  which 
sounded  in  the  song  of  the  nightingale,  which 
gurgled  out  of  the  little  brooklets  and  which 
filled  the  wind's  sad  song, — it  takes  posses 
sion  of  me — of  me;  of  an  atom  of  the  dust 
with  which  it  is  saturated.  I  know  that  this 
thought  will  annihilate  me, — that  I  cannot 
escape  from  it,  but  I  do  not  guard  myself 
against  it — and,  strange,  I  grow  quiet — so 
quiet  that  I  am  completely  filled  with  it. 
Slowly  the  small  fears  of  mortals  disperse. 
*  *  * 

Now  I  find  my  way  again.  I  go  through 
the  Gates  of  the  Vines  to  the  Square  of  the 
Algibes.  I  go  into  the  Alcazaba,  mount 
the  Ghafar,  the  mighty  watch  tower  of  the 
Moorish  princes.  A  brilliant  crescent  of 
the  moon  glows  between  two  hurrying 
clouds; — The  old  sign  of  Arabic  greatness, 
which  no  God  or  Christ  can  wipe  from 

48 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

Heaven.  I  glance  down  into  Granada, 
rich  in  churches,  with  its  noisy  swarming 
night  life — its  people  running  to  coffee 
houses;  reading  newspapers,  shining  shoes, 
and  having  shoes  shined.  They  look  into 
well-lighted  show  windows,  ride  in  tram- 
cars — their  water  carriers  crying  out  and 
gathering  cigar  butts.  They  cry  and  hoot, 
quarrel  and  make  peace  again — and  no  liv 
ing  soul  raises  an  eye — nobody  glances  up 
ward  to  the  glory  here.  The  Darro  roars 
to  the  right  of  me.  In  the  back  I  hear  the 
rushing  of  the  Xenil.  Bright  rays  of  flame 
emerge  from  the  Caves  of  the  Gypsy  Moun 
tain,  and  to  the  other  side,  the  snow-capped 
Sierras  gleam  silvery  in  the  moonlight.  Be 
tween  the  watch  towers  on  which  I  stand 
and  the  purple  towers  of  the  Moorish  Moun 
tain,  the  sombre  park  lies  deep  in  the  valley. 
Farther  back,  with  its  halls  upon  halls,  court 
yards  upon  courtyards,  lies  the  enchanted 
Palace  of  the  Alhambra. 

Down  there  the  small  life  of  this  century 
noisily  goes  its  way — up  here  is  the  land  of 
dreams — and  that  down  there — how  distant, 

49 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

how  infinitely  distant  it  is  from  me — and 
the  land  up  here — is  not  each  stone  a  part  of 
my  soul?  Am  I  alone  in  this  world  of 
spirits,  that  does  not  sense  that  blind  life 
below  ?  Am  I  not  a  part  of  all  these  dreams  ? 
Almighty  Beauty  turns  these  dreams  into 
verities.  Here  life  blossoms  and  the  truth 
below  becomes  a  shadow  play. 

Deed  is  nothing — thought  is  all.  Reality 
is  ugly — and  to  the  ugly  is  denied  all  right  of 
existence.  Dreams  are  beautiful,  and  are 
true  because  they  are  beautiful,  and  there 
fore  I  believe  in  dreams  as  in  the  only  real 
ity. 

*    *    « 

How  did  Edgar  Allan  Poe  look? 

There  are  men  who  radiate  a  special 
charm.  They  attract  without  wanting  to, 
— one  must  believe  in  their  personality,  and 
then  there  is  a  certain  quality  which  repels. 
One  is  not  conscious  what  it  consists  of,  but 
it  is  there.  They  are  branded  with  the  brand 
of  Art.  So  was  Oscar  Wilde, — so  was  Ed 
gar  Allan  Poe. 

His  figure  was  tall,  his  step  light,  and  his 

50 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

bearing  always  harmonious, — always  noble 
in  spite  of  his  poverty.  His  proud  features 
were  regular;  they  were  beautiful;  the  clear 
dark  grey  eyes  had  an  odd  violet  sheen.  The 
self-conscious  forehead  was  high,  and  of  won 
derful  proportion — his  complexion  was  pale, 
and  the  locks  that  framed  it  were  black. 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  beautiful  in  body  and 
mind.  His  gentle  voice  sounded  like  music. 

He  was  very  supple  and  strong — skillful 
in  all  athletic  sports,  an  indefatigable  swim 
mer,  who  at  one  time  swam  from  Richmond 
to  Warwick,  more  than  seven  miles,  with 
out  tiring,  against  the  rapid  tide;  a  trained 
athlete — a  very  fine  rider,  and  an  experi 
enced  fencer  who  often  challenged  an  op 
ponent  in  a  fit  of  anger. 

He  was  a  gentleman  from  top  to  toe — 
his  manner  in  company  was  fascinatingly 
amiable,  yet,  with  all  reserved.  He  was 
tender  and  gentle,  yet  earnest  and  firm. 
He  was  a  scholar  who  possessed  an  almost 
universal  education.  To  see  him  was  as 
great  a  pleasure  as  to  listen  to  him.  He  was 
always  the  donor,  and  it  was  his  curse  that 

51 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

so  few  of  all  those  on  whom  he  lavished  his 
rich  gifts  understood  or  appreciated  them. 
A  few  beautiful  women — understood  him? 
— No,  but  they  sensed  his  nobility  of  soul  in 
stinctively,  as  women  always  do.  Three 
persons  who  lived  in  his  time  had  the  ability 
to  comprehend  him  completely, — Baude 
laire  and  the  two  Brownings — but  they 
lived  over  there  in  Europe  and  he  never  met 
them. 

So  the  Poet  was  alone  in  his  solitary,  lofty 
dreams. 

And  as  he  was  beautiful,  and  above  all, 
loved  beauty,  so  everything  that  surrounded 
him  had  to  be  beautiful.  He  created  magni 
ficent  beauties  in  dreams,  which,  to  him, 
were  real.  In  them  he  lived  in  Landor's 
costly  country  house  or  on  the  splendid  estate 
at  Arnheim,  but  also  in  his  modest,  every 
day  life,  in  which  he  had  to  count  the  pen 
nies,  he  knew  how  to  create  an  atmosphere 
about  him  which  called  forth  the  admiration 
of  the  richest  people. 

His  little  cottage  at  Fordham,  in  which 
he  lived  at  the  side  of  the  doomed  wife, 

52 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

though  a  Paradise  of  Torture,  was  per 
meated  by  a  wonderful  harmony,  which 
charmed  all  visitors.  Dilapidated  furniture 
stood  about,  yet  even  thus  it  seemed  pleasing 
and  beautiful.  It  was  a  miserable  hut  on 
the  peak  of  a  little  hill,  but  blooming  cherry 
trees  stood  on  the  green  meadows;  early  in 
the  morning  little  song-birds  enticed  the 
Poet  to  the  nearby  pine  woods.  Then  he 
paced  among  his  gay  dahlia  bushes  and  in 
haled  the  sweet  perfume  of  the  mignonette 
and  heliotrope.  The  gentle  morning  breeze 
kissed  his  damp  brow,  caressed  his  tired  eyes, 
which  had  kept  watch  at  the  couch  of  his 
slowly  dying  beloved,  during  the  long  night. 
He  went  to  the  high  bridge  over  the  Harlem 
River,  or  to  the  rocky  cliffs  shaded  by  old 
cedars,  and  dreamed  there,  gazing  out  on  the 
landscape. 

Now  he  rests — somewhere.  The  day 
after  his  death  they  buried  him  in  the  West 
minster  Churchyard  in  Baltimore.  Like  a 
criminal  vagrant  they  picked  him  from  the 
street  and  buried  him  the  next  day.  His 
grave  is  supposed  to  be  close  to  that  of  his 

53 


EDGAR      ALLAN       POE 

grandfather's — General  David  Poe,  who 
made  a  name  for  himself  in  the  War  of  In 
dependence.  Thereabouts  he  is  supposed  to 
lie.  One  does  not  know  the  spot,  exactly — 
no  cross,  no  gravestone  arises  on  the  place 
— no  human  being  bothers  about  it.  His 
countrymen  have  other  cares;  what  interest 
have  they  in  a  dead  Poet? — For  about  a 
week  they  talked  of  the  unfortunate  de 
parted — to  besmirch — to  calumniate  his 
memory.  All  of  the  lies  which  are  still  cir 
culated  about  him  originated  at  this  time. 
A  whole  flood  of  poisoned  ink  was  poured 
over  the  dead  lion.  All  the  mediocrities  fell 
on  him,  the  envious  little  scribblers  whom  he 
had  mercilessly  torn  to  pieces,  concurred  in 
the  war  cry  of  the  lying  clergyman  Gris- 
wold. — "He  died  in  a  fit  of  drunkenness! 
•\ — He  drank,  he  drank,  he  drank." — Then 
they  forgot  him,  and  it  was  better  so;  his 
countrymen  had  not  matured  enough  to  ap 
preciate  their  great  Poet. 

Are  they  able  to  recognize  him  today? 
After  a  hundred  years  they  will  gather  the 
rotting  bones ;  they  will  erect  a  mighty  monu- 

54 


EDGAR       ALLAN       POE 

ment    and    write    thereon — "The    United 
States  to  its  great  Poet" — 

Let  them  keep  the  bones  in  America. 
We  (in  Europe)  will  listen  to  the  Poet's 
soul,  which  lives  in  the  nightingales'  throats 
in  the  Alhambra. 


THE   END 


55 


OVERDUE. 


SEP   25   1 


SEP   29  1932 
FfB    5   1934 
NOV  131934 

JAN     4    1946 


JUL2919S3LU 


2verstH.H. 
E.A.Poe 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


